Oedipus at Colonus summaryOnline Texts for Craig White's Literature Courses • Not a critical or scholarly text but a reading text for a seminar • Gratefully adapted from various websites featuring an out-of-copyright translation by Francis Storr (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1912) • Changes may include paragraph divisions, highlights, spelling updates, bracketed annotations, & elisions (marked by ellipses . . . ) Sophocles (ca. 497-405BC) Oedipus at Colonus written 406, produced 401 BC Oedipus cursing Polynices, with Ismene & Antigone Translation by Francis Storr, 1912: The old-fashioned feel of Storr’s translation derives partly from age but also style: its rhymes and meters often require archaic diction (word-choice), rendering some passages nearly unintelligible, but the archaic, obscure sound of the language elevates the play’s ritual nature and legendary atmosphere. To simplify reading, changes include modernized spelling; simplified punctuation; division of long speeches; and substitution of fresher diction from later translations. Bracketed annotations in small font are by instructor. Historical background: Sophocles’s “Theban Trilogy” concerns the “House of Cadmus”—the royal family of the Greek city-state of Thebes: Sophocles’s Theban plays in order of dramatic action: • Oedipus the King: Oedipus learns his crime and punishes himself • Oedipus at Colonus: Oedipus ends his wanderings and accepts his fate • Antigone: Oedipus’s daughter struggles to reconcile family and state Sophocles’s Theban plays were written in the following order: [Years count down instead of up Before Christian / Common Era.] • Antigone around 442 BCE • Oedipus the King in the 420s • Oedipus at Colonus, written shortly before Sophocles’s death in 406, was produced posthumously by his grandson (also named Sophocles) in 401. Another “Theban Trilogy” on the House of Cadmus, written by Aeschylus, won first prize in Athens’ dramatic competition of 467BCE. The plays were Laius, Oedipus, and Seven Against Thebes. Only the last survives; its action takes place between the action of Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone. Oedipus the King (Sophocles) > Oedipus at Colonus (Sophocles) > Seven Against Thebes (Aeschylus) > Antigone (Sophocles) Plot Description (adapted from Storr translation): Oedipus, the blind and banished King of Thebes, is led by his daughter Antigone to Colonus, a place near Athens. Oedipus sits to rest on a rock at the edge of a grove sacred to the Furies (vengeful spirits), where a passing native urges him to leave the holy ground. But Oedipus, who has been told by an oracle that Colonus would be his final resting-place, refuses to leave, and the Stranger agrees to summon the Elders of Colonus, who form the play’s Chorus. The elders, greeting Oedipus, initially pity the blind beggar and his daughter. When they learn who Oedipus is, however, they are horrified and order him to leave their land. Oedipus appeals to the renowned hospitality of Athens and hints that his presence will confer blessings on the area including the city of Athens (where the play would have been presented). The elders agree to await the decision of King Theseus, who happens to be an old companion of Oedipus. Oedipus asks Theseus for protection in life and burial in the area of Athens, with benefits and blessings to follow. Theseus departs having promised to aid and befriend Oedipus. No sooner has Theseus left than Creon, now King of Thebes, enters with an armed guard who have captured Ismene, Oedipus's other daughter, and who now seize Antigone. Creon is about to lay hands on Oedipus when Theseus, hearing the tumult, returns and, upbraiding Creon for his lawless act, threatens to detain him till he has restored the captives. In the next scene Theseus returns after rescuing Antigone and Ismene. Theseus informs Oedipus that someone wishes to see him—a Stranger who has taken sanctuary at the nearby altar of Poseidon (the god of the sea, very important to Athens as a naval empire). The Stranger is Polynices, Oedipus’s son and rival to his brother Eteocles for the throne of Thebes. Polynices has come to ask his father's forgiveness and blessing, knowing (by an oracle) that victory will fall to the side that Oedipus favors. But Oedipus spurns Polynices as a hypocrite with a curse on both his unnatural sons. Thunder is heard, and Oedipus, aware that his final hour has come, asks Antigone to summon Theseus. Self-guided, Oedipus leads Theseus and his daughters to the spot where death will overtake him. Halfway he bids his daughters farewell. What happened next was seen by no one but Theseus. The Messenger reports that the gods took Oedipus. Character Backgrounds for Oedipus at Colonus Oedipus: For audiences today, Oedipus is now known foremost as the tragic hero from Oedipus the King and the namesake for the Oedipus Conflict theorized by Freud. But as with many heroes of mythology, Oedipus’s story underwent numerous variations and extensions. Sometimes his character may have served as an all-purpose hero, and he and Theseus may have shared many adventures, though in this play they have only heard of each other. Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus shows Oedipus as a legendary figure whose suffering and nearness to the gods make him something of a holy man. Oedipus’s sacrifice to the will of heaven and his assumption into the afterlife may broadly anticipate features of the Christ story. A number of cults endured in Greece concerning Oedipus and his supposed burial sites. Nietzsche writes in Birth of Tragedy (ch. 9, 46-7), "Sophocles saw the most suffering character on the Greek stage, the unhappy Oedipus, as the noble man who is predestined for error and misery despite his wisdom, but who finally, through his terrible suffering, exerts a magical and beneficial power that continues to prevail after his death. The noble man does not sin, the profound poet wishes to tell us: through his actions every law, every natural order, the whole moral world can be destroyed, and through these actions a higher magic circle of effects is drawn, founding a new world on the ruins of the old, now destroyed. . . . [S]uch is the truly Hellenic [Greek] delight in this dialectical unravelment that it casts a sense of triumphant cheerfulness over the whole work, and takes the sting from all the terrible premises of the plot. In Oedipus at Colonus, we encounter this same cheerfulness, but elevated in a process of infinite transfiguration. . . ." THESEUS was a legendary king of Athens and a popular hero of Greek mythology, comparable to Hercules in swashbuckling and sexual adventures. Theseus destroyed monsters and villains plaguing the Greek highways and countryside. His most famous victory was over the half-bull, half-man Minotaur in the labyrinth of King Minos at Crete. • Theseus’s mother was Aethra, a daughter of King Pittheus of Troezen. • Theseus had two fathers—one mortal, one immortal. His mortal father was Aegeus, a founding king of Athens. His immortal father was the sea-god Poseidon / Neptune. Aethra slept with both Aegeus and Poseidon on the night Theseus was conceived. Setting: Colonus, Kolonis, or Kolonosh may be found on the map northeast of Athens. This ancient district of Attica surrounding Athens in southern Greece was Sophocles’s birthplace. • Ancient Colonus was home to a temple of Poseidon and a grove sacred to the Furies or Eumenides, both mentioned in Oedipus at Colonus. • Poseidon the sea god was important to Athens's identity as a naval empire—also Theseus's father (maybe). • The Furies / Eumenides—spirits of the dead seeking revenge or reconciliation—were important to Athens as a city of laws. (Compare Aeschylus's The Euminides) • Trespassing on the Furies’ sacred grove, Oedipus re-enacts a crime like that he committed against his family. But he has heard a prophecy that the grove will be his final resting place, appropriate because the Furies were concerned with justice to relatives. The end of the play suggests reconciliation between the gods, earth, and humanity.
OedipusAntigoneOedipus at Colonus
line 880: “In a just cause, the weak overcome the strong”.